Thursday, October 30, 2008

Can We Call Neveda for McCain As Well?

If the Florida early voteswere any indication, there seems to be a hell of a lot more "McCainicats" than "Obamacons" out there, as voting trends in that state has shown that despite more Democrats voting, McCain was either tied or ahead.We seem to be showing a similar trendtowards McCain in Nevada as well:The guy doing the exit poll of those who have already voted, with 7,147 responses, puts Obama ahead, 50 percent to 48 percent.That's a big sample, so I'll go with it. But why is that so positive for McCain?In Clark County, "through Sunday, 55 percent of early voters were Democrats, 29 percent Republicans.""In Washoe County, 51 percent of the early voters through Sunday were Democrats, while 33 percent were Republicans."Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and its surrounding area, has 68.7 percent of the registered voters in the state. Washoe County, which includes Reno, has 18.6 percent of the registered voters in the state.And those polls - oh, those wacky polls:No pollster has had McCain ahead in Nevada since the end of September. So why is McCain so dramatically overperforming among early voters who are disproportionately Democrats?Here's why the Nevada post-voting poll is so accurate, and the national polls so way off:With those numbers, you would expect Obama to be ahead by a much wider margin. Unless that poll of the early voters was way off — and this pollster managed to reach roughly one out of every 43 early voters; think about that when you see a poll of 1,000 designed to represent a national voting pool of 120-130 million voters! — a considerable number of Democrats and independents/unaffiliateds in Nevada are voting for McCain.If this pattern holds true, then McCain can win Pennsylvania. And if McCain wins Pennsylvania, Obama is toast.Oh, we may see a landslide this November - just not the one the media has been calling...